By Ricardo Francino Saldivia

The UFO seen at the El Yeso Reservoir was twice the size of the National Stadium.

The photo of an alleged UFO in Chile has left more than one viewer startled after that country’s Comité de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anomalos (CEFAA) confirmed its authenticity.

The image was taken in the area known as El Yeso Reservoir by a Venezuelan couple living in the southern country. The image was investigated by CEFFA through its director general, Gen. Ricardo Bermudez (Ret.).

“After considerable research time we reached a series of conclusions that are the same obtained in the United States, and which are: this photograph is real and not a hoax; Second, that the incidence of the light in these clouds is the same as that which falls upon the object; Third, that it has its own light, and therefore a series of portholes are visible. This is according to our Ph.D in meteorology, and according to the clouds existing at the time during that season in the Cordillera, makes it twice the size of the National Stadium (in Chile),” he told Terra Chile.

“We do not know what it is or where it came from, but the anomalous aerial phenomenon described as an unidentified flying object is real and we have the proof and the eyewitness accounts to support it,” notes Bermudez, who was a military pilot for the Chilean Air Force, flying F-5 fighters among other craft.

“We receive over a thousand reports each year and 95% are anomalous phenomena that we can fully justify. We discard 2% from the remaining five per cent, leaving us with 3% to which no scientific answer can be found. This is being studied because it is real and occurring worldwide.”

CEFAA, created in 1997, is an agency of the Technical Aeronautics School (ETA), a body which went on to become a branch of the General Secretariat of the General Office of Civil Aeronautics in Chile.
Its mission according to its website, is to compile, analyze and study all reports of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) occurring over Chile “through serious, objective and scientific investigation in order to determine whether the safety of air operations have been jeopardized, thus contributing to the safety of aviation in Chile.”

[Translation © 2014 S. Corrales, IHU with thanks to Guillermo Giménez, Planeta UFO]

Source: Planeta UFO and Terra Peru

Dwarf planet stretches Solar System's edge

Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science

This orbit diagram shows the paths of Oort cloud objects 2012 VP₁₁₃ (red) and Sedna (orange), which circle the Kuiper belt (blue) at the Solar System's edge.

The Solar System just got a lot more far-flung. Astronomers have discovered a probable dwarf planet that orbits the Sun far beyond Pluto, in the most distant trajectory known.

Together with Sedna, a similar extreme object discovered a decade ago, the find is reshaping ideas about how the Solar System came to be. “It goes to show that there’s something we don’t know about our Solar System, and it’s something important,” says co-discoverer Chad Trujillo, an astronomer at Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii. “We’re starting to get a taste of what’s out beyond what we consider the edge.”

Trujillo and Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, report the finding today in Nature.

The newfound object's official name is 2012 VP₁₁₃, but the discovery team calls it VP for short, or just 'Biden' — after US Vice-President Joe Biden. In several years time, after observations have pinned down its orbit, the scientists will submit a name for consideration by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the organization in charge of celestial nomenclature.

Bleeding edge

The classical planetary portion of the Solar System ends at Neptune, which orbits the Sun at about 30 times the Earth–Sun distance, a cosmic yardstick known as an astronomical unit (AU). One AU is approximately 150 million kilometres. Beyond Neptune is a realm of icy bodies, known as the Kuiper belt, that includes Pluto. This region stretches from roughly 30 to 50 AU. And beyond that lies the Oort cloud, with Sedna at its inner edge and comets farther out.

Sedna never gets any closer to the Sun than 76 AU. 2012 VP₁₁₃, although still in the inner Oort cloud, is even more remote: at its closest, it is 80 AU away.

The red, green and blue dots show the movement of 2012 VP₁₁₃ over a period of several hours on 5 November 2012.

The body is so distant that when Sheppard first spotted it, it was the slowest-moving astronomical object he had ever seen. The farther away something is, the slower it seems to move across the sky. Trujillo and Sheppard have been hunting for distant objects with the Dark Energy Camera, a 520-megapixel camera on the 4-metre Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. They captured 2012 VP₁₁₃ during their first
observing run, in November 2012, on the fifth image of the hundreds they would eventually snap. “We got lucky right away,” says Sheppard.

For months they tracked the object, until its full orbit became more apparent. But whereas Sedna can stray as far as 1,000 AU from the Sun, 2012 VP₁₁₃ gets no further than about 452 AU. It seems to be more closely bound by the Sun’s gravity, which is something of a mystery, says Sheppard.

Origin stories

At 450 kilometres across, 2012 VP₁₁₃ is about half the size of Sedna. If, as scientists expect, it is made mostly of ice, then its gravity probably pulls it into a spherical shape. This would qualify it as a dwarf planet under the revised rules of planethood drawn up by the IAU in 2006.

There are several competing ideas for how objects such as Sedna and 2012 VP₁₁₃ got to where they are today. One leading hypothesis proposes that in the Solar System’s infancy, a nearby star gravitationally perturbed the coalescing system and dragged some fragments out towards the edge. Another possibility is that a massive rogue planet passed through at some point, kicking objects from the Kuiper belt outwards into the inner Oort cloud.

Either way, Sedna and 2012 VP₁₁₃ may be just the tip of the iceberg, says Megan Schwamb, an astronomer at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. She has looked for Sedna-like objects before, and has modelled how much material could be out there. The inner Oort cloud could contain some 10–100 times the mass of the Kuiper belt, she says.

Trujillo and Sheppard estimate that there are hundreds more inner Oort objects waiting to be found. They are currently tracking six more candidates that could belong to extreme parts of the Solar System. 

Former Air Force officer claims UFOs were cover-up in Mirage Men film

A former Air Force officer claims UFOs were used as a cover-up in the new UFO documentary Mirage Men. The film which originally premiered at select
film festivals in June of last year will be available to rent and stream online beginning March 27th.

The movie is based off of the 2010 book Mirage Men: An Adventure into Paranoia, Espionage, Psychological Warfare, and UFOs by Mark Pilkington, a British journalist and filmmaker. The book asserts that the U.S. military was
responsible for planting stories about UFOs to the public in order to conceal secret military projects.

The film centers around Richard Doty, a former Air Force officer who served in the Office of Special Investigation in the 1980s. Doty claims that he fed disinformation about UFOs in order to keep the public from discovering classified secret projects. He also alleges that the government has had contact with extraterrestrial civilizations and that UFOs are extraterrestrial crafts. His alleged disinformation campaign came at the cost of UFO researcher Paul Bennewitz, that account can be found in the October/November 2013 issue of Open Minds magazine.

MirageMen.com describes:

“How the US government created a myth that took over the world: UFOs: weapons of mass deception… For over 60 years teams within the US Air Force and Intelligence services exploited and manipulated beliefs about UFOs and ET visitations as part of their counterintelligence programmes. In doing so they spawned a mythology so powerful that it captivated and warped many brilliant minds, including several of their own. Now, for the first time, some of those behind these operations, and their victims, speak out, revealing a true story that is part Manchurian Candidate and part Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Your God Is Too Small

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the "Ship of the Imagination" in an episode of the new Cosmos.

Photo courtesy Fox

Bold Prediction: Intelligent Alien Life Could Be Found by 2040

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The first detection of intelligent extraterrestrial life will likely come within the next quarter-century, a prominent alien hunter predicts.

By 2040 or so, astronomers will have scanned enough star systems to give themselves a great shot of discovering alien-produced electromagnetic signals, said Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif.

"I think we'll find E.T. within two dozen years using these sorts of experiments," Shostak said here Thursday (Feb. 6) during a talk at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) symposium at Stanford University. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

"Instead of looking at a few thousand star systems, which is the tally so far, we will have looked at maybe a million star systems" 24 years from now, Shostak said. "A million might be the right number to find something."

Many potentially habitable worlds

Shostak's optimism is based partly on observations by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler
space telescope, which has shown that the Milky Way galaxy likely teems with worlds capable of supporting life as we know it.

"The bottom line is, like one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up," Shostak said. "That's a fantastically large percentage.
That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds."

Shostak and his colleagues think at least some of these worlds host intelligent aliens — beings that have developed the capability to send electromagnetic signals out into the cosmos, as human civilization does every second of every day. So they're pointing big radio dishes toward the heavens, hoping to detect something produced by living beings.

This search started in 1960, when pioneering astronomer Frank Drake scanned two sun-like stars with an 85-foot-wide (26 meters) West Virginia antenna. It has ramped up considerably over the past half-century, as astronomers have taken advantage of significant advances in electronics and digital technology.

However, getting enough funding to keep scanning the skies is a constant problem. For example, the Allen Telescope Array in northern California — which the SETI Institute uses — was designed to consist of 350 radio dishes, but just 42 have been built to date. And the array had to go into hibernation in April 2011 due to budget shortfalls. (It came back online in December of that year after more funding was found.)

The funding situation colors any discussion of SETI activities and timelines, Shostak said

The 24-year estimate, for example, "depends on continued SETI funding, which is in dire straits right now," he told Space.com after his talk at the NIAC symposium.

A three-way race to find life in space

The search for alien life does not focus solely on technological societies, of course. Many other scientists are keying in on simple life forms, which must be distributed much more commonly throughout the universe.

The first evidence of microbial life on Earth, for instance, dates from 3.8 billion years ago — just 700 million years after our planet formed. But it took another 1.7 billion years for multicellular life to evolve. Humans didn't emerge until 200,000 years ago, and we've become a truly technological species in just the last century or so.

Shostak thus views the alien life hunt as a three-way race. The contenders are researchers looking for advanced, intelligent civilizations; scientists scouring solar-system bodies such as Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa for simple organisms; and researchers focusing on finding signs of microbial life on nearby exoplanets using future instruments such as NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018.

The race may come down to the wire, as Shostak thinks all three approaches could bear fruit in the next few decades.

"I think any of these horses has a pretty good chance of succeeding — just my opinion — a pretty good chance of succeeding in the next 20 years, say," he said during the NIAC talk.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.
Originally published on Space.com.

AN EXTRAORDINARY "hyperspace" engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.

The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine.

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.

The US air force has expressed an interest in the idea and scientists working for the American Department of Energy - which has a device known as the Z Machine that could generate the kind of magnetic fields required to drive the engine - say they may carry out a test if the theory withstands further scrutiny.

Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that if everything went well a working engine could be tested in about five years.

However, Prof Hauser, a physicist at the Applied Sciences University in Salzgitter, Germany, and a former chief of aerodynamics at the European Space Agency, cautioned it was based on a highly controversial theory that would require a significant change in the current understanding of the laws of physics.

"It would be amazing. I have been working on propulsion systems for quite a while and it would be the most amazing thing. The benefits would be almost unlimited," he said.

"But this thing is not around the corner; we first have to prove the basic science is correct and there are quite a few physicists who have a different opinion.

"It's our job to prove we are right and we are working on that."

He said the engine would enable spaceships to travel to different solar systems. "If the theory is correct then this is not science fiction, it is science fact," Prof Hauser said.

"NASA have contacted me and next week I'm going to see someone from the [US] air force to talk about it further, but it is at a very early stage. I think the best-case scenario would be within the next five years [to build a test device] if the technology works."

The US authorities' attention was attracted after Prof Hauser and an Austrian colleague, Walter Droscher, wrote a paper called "Guidelines for a space propulsion device based on Heim's quantum theory".

Unique Airship Designed For Massive Cargo Is Almost Ready For First Test Flight

MONTEBELLO (CBSLA.com) — A new airship designed to  carry massive cargo is almost ready for its first test flight.

The 36,000-pound, blimp-like aircraft, made of aluminum and carbon fiber, is the first of its kind and built in the Southland. It took four years to create.

The Pentagon and NASA commissioned Worldwide Aeros Corp., based in Montebello, to build the airship on a $35-million contract. The aircraft company employees 100 people.

“I’m sure people are going to be like, ‘Oh, there’s a UFO flying around,’” Worldwide Aeros engineer Tim Kenny said. This is the next step of aviation. We haven’t had anything like this for how many years now of advancement.”

It was designed to carry tons of cargo to areas with little to no infrastructure. The vessel would likely be used for military and humanitarian operations in developing countries.

“We can offload the cargo and come home, completely independent of any infrastructure,” Kenny said.

The model being tested is a preliminary design before Worldwide Aeros goes on to build three bigger models. The first test flight is scheduled for some time in the next couple of months.

A Star Just Exploded 'Next Door' And It's A Huge Deal

While you were sleeping, a supernova was spotted "practically next door" and it is, to paraphrase Joe Biden, a big freaking deal.

The stellar explosion occurred in the galaxy Messier 82 (M82), about 12 million light years from Earth. This means the star exploded nearly 12 million years ago and we're just seeing it. University College London claimed to be one of the first to spot the supernova, one of the closest since the 1980s.

It's a huge deal.

This animation, from Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes and Martino Nicolini, shows the before and after:

Want to see the supernova for yourself? Look into the constellation Ursa Major in the Northern Hemisphere. Skymania provided this map:

The best time to see the supernova "is as soon as the sky gets dark when it’s already up in the northeastern sky above the Dipper Bowl," reports Universe Today.

Researchers speculate this may be a type Ia supernova, which is "the type we use to measure the expansion of the Universe and so that would be especially exciting."

Astronomer and cosmologist Brad Tucker made this timelapse of a similar supernova beginning Oct. 24, 2012:

Want to learn more about supernovae? Check out this clip from Wonders of the Universe:

Stay connected with Science Channel on Twitter and Facebook.

If we down at least one UFO we'll be facing an interstellar war
- Former Defense Minister of Canada

He was Canadian minister of Defense in 1960s, ruling over the country’s armed
forces during the time of the Cold War – and when he retired he publicly stated
that we are not alone in the universe, and some guests from outer space actually live here, on planet Earth. Is this fantasy? Is someone actually watching us?
Today we ask the man who says UFOs are a serious business – Paul Hellyer.

Follow@SophieCo_RT

Sophie Shevardnadze: Our guest today is the Honorable Paul Hellyer, former minister of Defense of Canada, and he believes that life forms from space are present on Earth. It’s great to have you on our show. Why do you say that UFOs are as real as airplanes flying over our heads?

Paul Hellyer: Because I know that they are. As a matter of fact, they’ve been visiting our planet for thousands of years and one of the cases that would interest you most if you give me two or three minutes to answer is that during the Cold War, 1961, there were about 50 UFOs in formation flying south from Russia across Europe, and Supreme Allied Command was very concerned and about ready to press the “Panic” button when they turned around and went back over the North Pole. They decided to do an investigation and they investigated for 3 years and they decided that, with absolute certainty, four species - at least – had been visiting this planet for thousands of years. We have a long history of UFOs and of course there has been a lot more activity in the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb and they are very concerned about that and the fact that we might use it again, and because the Cosmos is a unity and it affects not just us but other people in the Cosmos, they are very much afraid that we might be stupid enough to start using atomic weapons again, and this would be very bad for us and for them as well.

• One Million UFOs are reported each year. [Dubious - MUFON receives less than
  10,000].
• 5% are unexplained
• These are the "Close Encounters"

Well, not really. "Close Encounters" are supposedly those cases where the UFO
comes within a few hundred yards of the observer. The problem is, people are
quite unable to accurately judge how far away a light in the sky is. The UFO
literature is filled with reported "close encounters" with objects whose
distance from the observer turns out to be measured in hundreds of miles, if not in millions.

The re-entry of the rocket booster Cosmos 2335, as depicted by Discovery Canada.

Witness PEL2 drew the Yukon UFO passing below the Big Dipper

Molczan's software-generated plot of the decay of the rocket booster for Cosmos 2335

Discovery's "talking heads" for that case were Martin Jasek of UFO-BC, the original investigator of the case, and Chris Rutkowski, a Canadian UFO researcher who has had (at least until now) a decent reputation for objectivity.
Rutkowski was participating in a Facebook discussion of the case a few days before the episode aired. I entered the thread to ask, "Chris Rutkowski, I'm just wondering if you were totally unaware that the Yukon UFO case was solidly debunked almost two years ago?", and gave a link to my Blog entry. Rutkowski replied, 

The absurdity is compounded by the fact that Molczan is Canadian, and lives right in Toronto, where the episode was filmed. He remarked, "they could have had my input for the cost of cab fare." But of course Discovery Canada had no interest in that. Not a hint of questioning or doubt appears in the episode.
Sensation and ratings are the only goal, and troubling facts are things to be ignored. This is Tabloid TV at its worst. The once-factual Discovery Channel has now joined the purveyors of entertainment masquerading as documentaries.

'Did you see that?' Heathrow jet pilot saw high-speed 'UFO' that passed within feet of his plane'

• Pilot reported a silver cigar-shaped object heading
  straight for him
• He ducked and reached out to co-pilot as 'craft' passed
  just above cockpit
• Air authorities say it was likely a reflection from an
  aircraft to the west

By Sam Webb

PUBLISHED: 14:57 GMT, 5 January 2014 |
UPDATED: 16:04 GMT, 5 January 2014

A pilot has reported a mysterious flying object passed within feet of his cockpit in the skies around London's Heathrow Airport.

The captain of the A320, flying to the west of the airport, was looking out the a cockpit window and saw a cigar-shaped metallic object flying at a similar altitude, seemingly directly at his plane.

A report on the apparent near-miss, which took place in July, has just been released by the UK Airprox Board, part of the Civil Aviation Authority.

Are they out there? The captain of the A320, flying just to the west of the airport, was looking out the a cockpit window and saw a cigar-shaped metallic object, it has been reported. File picture

Fire in the sky: The pilot described the craft as shaped like a rugby ball or cigar and metallic in appearance. File picture

It said: 'Having very little time to focus, he was under the apprehension that they were on a collision course with no time to react.

'His immediate reaction was to duck to the right and reach over the alert the FO (first officer); there was no time to talk to alert him.

'His first words to the FO were, "did you see that?", who replied "see what?"

The captain perceived an object pass within a few feet of the aircraft. It could best be described as cigar/rugby ball-like in shape, bright silver and metallic-like in construction.'

The pilot asked air traffic control if any other aircraft were in the vicinity, but was told that there none close by, although there were other airliners to the west.

An aerial view of Heathrow Airport. The A320 was flying to the west of the airport

Investigators ruled out the possibility that it was a meteorological balloon or a helium balloon.

The report added: 'Nevertheless, the A320 pilot was subject to a powerful impression of immediate danger, caused by his perception of an object closing rapidly on his aircraft.

'Although only supposition, members opined that this may have been due to a combination of a possible reflection of the low sun off one of the aircraft to the west, and of the pilot's head movement as he looked forward.

'It was decided that, although the reflection theory had some merit, the overall dearth of information relating to the event rendered and meaningful finding impossible.'

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Time travelers, if they really exist, seem to be keeping
their adventures to themselves.

Researchers with perhaps a bit too much time on their hands conducted an extensive Internet and social media search for evidence of time travelers going
back in history and then bragging about it online.

And they came up empty. No real life Dr. Who or Marty McFly from "Back to the Future" tweeting secrets a bit early.

The idea: If someone mentions a Pope Francis in a 2011 tweet, Facebook post
or blog item, then they must have come back from the future with special knowledge.

But no one posted anything prescient.

And last September, the researchers asked people to tweet "#Icanchangethepast2" - but do it before August, a month earlier. Again, no one did.

The disappointing results, rejected by three physics journals, will be presented Tuesday at the American Astronomical Society conference in Washington.

If someone went back in time and said something to hint about the future, it would prove the concept of time travel, said astrophysicist Robert Nemiroff.

He said this was merely summer fun that cost nothing to do.

"This wasn't a major research push," Nemiroff said Monday at the astronomy
meeting. "This was typing things into search engines. Billions of dollars are spent on time travel movies and books and stuff like that. This probably costs less than a dollar to check on it."

Nemiroff said this isn't his normal field and he didn't much believe in traveling backward in time before - and believes less in it now. "Unless I go back (in time) and publish lots of papers," he joked.

Other scientists didn't quite take it too seriously either.

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb said in an email, "as anyone who uses online dating knows, the Internet is the last place to find the truth about the physical reality."

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